Sociology And Anthropology Essay

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“To understand their current lives, it was necessary to learn how they got started in life, the various processes involved in their continued prostitution careers, the link between prostitution and drug use, the women's interactions with their pimps and customers, and the impact of the AIDS epidemic and increasing violence on their experiences.” (Sterk, Claire E., p.35, from Conformity and Conflicts: Readings in Cultural Anthropology) Claire Sterk is an anthropologist who engaged in a continuous study of prostitutes in Atlanta metropolitan area and New York City. Her research had required her to introduce and engage herself and discover the places where her informants worked and hung out. She had develop bonds and carry on unlimited interviews that allowed informants to show her their lives.

Her research covers women who work in the lower line of the prostitution world. These women worked in the streets at night time, in hotels and other public settings known for prostitution activity and in a much less public settings for drug-use prostitutes like a crack house, which might be someone's apartment. One of Sterk's first challenges she faced was to identify the locations. She visited various areas and continued to learn about new settings. She was developing ethnographic maps of street prostitution. On her first visit she met a prostitute and had her first conversation and connection to the scene. Sterk knew that qualitative researchers often referred to their primary connections as key respondents, but she learned throughout her fieldwork that some of them are important in providing initial approach, but they become less important as the research advances.

All interviews Sterk did was conducted in a professional way and at a personal location, but only after she developed relationships with the women. The interviewees were required to sign a consent form, which made the whole situation ironic as they were trusting her but she is asking them to sign a form....